Stephen Ladyman: I can understand my hon. Friend's concern, and traffic calming obviously plays an important part in road safety. The Victoria road east extension, to which he refers, has been completed recently and there have been some accidents on it already. When roads are designed, we provide expertise and support to ensure that every possible measure is taken make sure that the road will operate safely. If that subsequently proves not to be the case, it is important that local authorities prioritise work to improve safety on those roads. I have no doubt that his local council will do that very thing, and if the Department can provide it with any advice on how to do it, we will certainly do so.

David Kidney: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. There has been a big increase in the volume of rail freight since 1997, and I am keen to see that growth continue. Will he say a little about the actions that will be required in respect of the future needs for additional infrastructure, who will pay for that and whether it is intended that there will be a successor to the successful rail freight grant scheme?

Brian Jenkins: My hon. Friend knows that the increase in freight traffic brings with it a requirement to four-track the line through Tamworth, which will no doubt cause much inconvenience to the town because it will take out the two main road bridges between the north and the south. Will he assure me that, having suffered that inconvenience, we will get some benefit by seeing once again local community trains running on the four-track line and that Tamworth will be considered for being made a terminal point where the lines between the north-east, south-west, north-west and south-east cross? At present, we continually send people to Birmingham New Street, which is a congested sticking point?

Derek Twigg: I cannot promise my hon. Friend community rail links, but as he knows, the substantial improvement to the capacity of the west coast main line will allow 60 per cent. more freight to be carried on it. I know that he has worries about the matter, so I am more than happy to meet him to discuss them further.

Mr. Speaker: I have selected the amendment in the names of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) and her colleagues.
	Motion made, and Question proposed, To leave out from "That" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
	"this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Identity Cards Bill because the scheme proposed in the Bill will make no significant contribution to the reduction or eradication of terrorism, illegal immigration, or illegal employment; contains no proper safeguards to limit or prescribe the information to be stored upon identity cards or the national register, or the agencies and organisations, national or international, to whome this information will be made available or will be given; fails to identify the biometric details to be stored or to acknowledge the effectiveness of the same or the margins of, the consequences of, and the remedies for, error; fails properly to limit or define the fees which may be levied by the Secretary of State; and the Bill provides for the costs of the scheme to be paid on the authority of the Secretary of State without providing to Parliament any proper estimates of the vast costs likely to be incurred."—[Lynne Jones.]

William Cash: Does the Home Secretary agree that the Information Commissioner's remarks that the
	"data trail of identity checks on individuals risk an unnecessary and disproportionate intrusion into individuals' privacy"?
	Such identity checks are in fact and in law an intrusion into people's human rights. How can he sign off the Bill as being compatible with the European convention on human rights?

Charles Clarke: I shall come to some particulars, but I before I do so I shall take a couple of interventions.

Nick Gibb: Given that the identity card database will have details of everyone's fingerprints and other biometric information, what assurances can the Secretary of State give that that database will not be used routinely by the police in their normal investigation processes so that, for example, a fingerprint left on a pen in a bank will not lead to innocent people bring questioned and having to explain their whereabouts on the day that that bank was robbed?

Charles Clarke: I can give the assurance that the law of the land requires that the police can operate only in accordance with the legal powers that they have at the moment. That is a very important requirement. It is right that police and security services should have powers as regards national security or serious and organised crime—whatever the issue might be. The House has agreed that it is right that they should have powers in those circumstances so that we can protect ourselves, but—I emphasise the point that I made earlier—those rights are already set out in the existing law and are not changed by this legislation.

Charles Clarke: I shall make some progress and then give way.
	In the information society in which we live, identity cards will be a means of helping to control it rather than adding to it. I want to give full particulars, dealing with personal protection, access to private companies, the role of the police and the position of ethnic minorities. All those points have been raised with me.
	I deal first with personal protection. I want to make it explicitly clear that, under the Data Protection Act 1998, everyone has the right, without qualification, to check the record that is held on them. Moreover, the same right to check who has accessed the database that currently exists in data protection legislation will apply to the identity database in the Bill. I know that many of my hon. Friends in particular have been worried about those aspects. I therefore take the opportunity not only to set that out clearly and openly but to state that, in Committee, I am prepared to consider amendments that might make it more explicit.
	I acknowledge that people have concerns because the matter involves the Data Protection Act and they are worried about what might be perceived as a potentially secretive database. I am keen to draw that out.

Patrick Cormack: Given that, even for the Home Secretary, this is the beginning of a new Parliament, and given all the his undertakings to provide for detailed consideration in Committee, why is the Committee timetable so congested? It requires the Bill to be out of Committee three weeks from today. Why can he not further consider my suggestion on the last Second Reading that the Bill—complex as it is, and affecting every man, woman and child in the country—should be referred to a Joint Select Committee of the Lords and the Commons for the most critical and detailed scrutiny?

Charles Walker: Will the Secretary of State tell the House how he believes ID cards protected the people of New York on 11 September 2001? The Government talk about national security, but ID cards clearly did not help in those circumstances, or subsequently in Madrid.

Damian Green: May I bring the Home Secretary back to the benefits to the citizens of this country, particularly some of the most vulnerable citizens of this country? The Disability Rights Commission has said that the Government's own research
	"shows that 62,000 disabled people will not be able to register their biometrics in any way",
	and
	"many hundreds of thousands of disabled people"
	are
	"likely to experience significant barriers to enrolment".
	If libraries and other public services are going to depend on access to the identity card system, some of the most vulnerable disabled people in society will be among those who will be denied the alleged benefits.

Mark Fisher: On the necessity of carrying a card, will the Home Secretary clarify two points? First, he cited the Spanish experience in saying that the Spanish only managed to get those people because having an ID card is a requirement to get a mobile phone in Spain. Is he saying that that would be the situation in this country and that people who want a mobile phone must have an ID card? Secondly, he told the House that a card will not be necessary to gain access to public services, but clause 15(1) says precisely the opposite: someone who provides public services may make it a requirement to see an ID card. Is it his intention to delete clause 15(1) in Committee?

David Davis: The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely good point. The reason the common law countries are unique in this respect is that they are the countries which presume that the citizen is free to do anything unless there is a law against it. That is rather different from the Napoleonic law countries. If America can get by without an identity card, it is hard to see why we cannot.
	I have always made it clear that before the events of 9/11 I would never have even countenanced the concept of an identity card, but since 9/11, in my present post, I accepted that we should listen to the Government's case, just as we should consider any possible device that could make our country and our people safer. Having done so, including considering what the Home Secretary said today, I conclude that the Government's identity card will be little more than an expensive waste of time and money. It is a plastic poll tax, and it is a symbol of this Government's determination to centralise and control everything at the expense of the liberties of the British people. Longstanding freedoms cannot and should not be given away cheaply; they should only be given up on the basis of compelling and exceptional need. All Opposition Members understand that principle, but the Government's record shows that they do not.
	Some months ago, I set the Home Secretary five tests, some of which he referred to today. Had he met them, we might have been persuaded to give the previous Bill a fair wind before the election, but he failed to respond adequately to any of the questions. Fortunately for us, other people have come up with the answers to those questions, but unfortunately for the Home Secretary, the answers are universally unhelpful to his case.
	I asked the Home Secretary precisely what the purpose of the cards would be. ID cards were originally presented as a response to the terrorist threat after 9/11, which is why I was prepared to listen in the first place. Despite the Home Secretary's comments today, the Government no longer make that case—they know that ID cards would not take effect for many, many years and that terrorists would not be deterred by them. Furthermore, the cards will not be compulsory, so they will not have any effect. Whatever the Home Secretary has said, ID cards did not deter the bombers in Madrid, and they would not have helped in New York, either. If the technology ever becomes effective, terrorists will bypass it, and I shall return to that point.
	At times, ID cards have been presented as entitlement cards to tackle benefit fraud—as an aside, the cost of benefit fraud is tiny by comparison with the cost of ID cards, even if one accepts the Government's numbers, which I do not. ID cards were also supposed to tackle illegal working, but in October last year, the previous Home Secretary was back to justifying them on the grounds of welfare fraud.
	The Home Secretary has said:
	"Identity cards will provide a simple and secure way of verifying identity, helping us to tackle illegal working, organised crime, terrorist activity, identity theft and fraudulent access to public services."—[Official Report, 7 February 2005; Vol. 430, c. 1183.]
	However, his predecessor admitted that ID cards will not tackle terrorism; the Law Society says that ID cards will not tackle illegal working; and Liberty and the Law Society say that ID cards will not tackle crime. The purpose of ID cards remains unclear, and the Government's case has been, at best, slippery.
	A recent article in The Observer stated:
	"The Government's motives have been obscured by the ad hoc way in which claimed advantages pile up. Our trust in the state to handle our data safely is undermined by this shifting account of the purpose of ID cards".
	It is now clear that ID cards will not fight terrorism, tackle crime, control immigration or stop fraud. They have no effective purpose.

David Davis: No. In about two minutes, I will explain to the hon. Lady why that will, unfortunately, remain too easy.
	Before I get to that, I want to deal with the next test, which is the question of whether the Home Office could do this. The Home Secretary showed admirable loyalty in defending his Department on that issue, but again, did not answer the question despite its being asked by the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. Other people, however, have answered that question too.
	Let us recount some of the computer projects that the Government have made a hash of. Last week, we saw that the tax credits system is in chaos because of IT problems. The Home Office itself is one of the worst-offending Departments when it comes to IT management. Remember the police national computer? One would think that that would be very accurate because it has biometric data associated with it, but an audit recently found that 65 per cent. of its files contained errors. Remember the asylum seeker processing system? With a budget of £80 million, the project was scrapped after it was found to be flawed. Remember the infamous Passport Agency project? Its delivery was delayed and it eventually came in £12.5 million over budget. Before the supposed good performance that the Home Secretary told us about, the failures led to more than 500,000 people waiting for passports in the early summer of 1999.
	The important point to understand here is that one good year in six is not good enough for a computer that is fundamental to our security systems.

David Winnick: If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will not.
	When the Home Affairs Committee took evidence, the point was made by a number of witnesses that it is not just the identity card but the database and the national identity register that should give a good deal of cause for concern. They certainly gave me, if not my colleagues on the Home Affairs Committee, cause for concern. Indeed, rather than voting for the majority report, I wrote a minority amendment to it.
	If this proposal comes to fruition, even when we change address—except for the shortest possible period—we will have to notify the authorities. Some may say, "Why should we not?" I say, "Why should we?" It is argued that the authorities already hold a great deal of information on individuals via the national health service and national insurance, for example, but that is not the subject of any controversy. Indeed, Labour Members are all in favour of holding information relating to welfare benefits and so on, but that is not an argument for extending the amount of information held by the authorities; it is certainly not an argument for having the proposed database.
	In fact, schedule 1 could be amended not by primary but by secondary legislation, so that the list of information that might be included on the register could be added to. That is why there is concern about function creep. It is true that such information could be added to only with the authority of both Houses. Nevertheless, more such information will be added over time, and the Government of the day—it might not be a Labour Government—will justify doing so by claiming that it is absolutely essential.
	There is a particular point to which I cannot help returning—if what my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary had to say today is so reassuring, why is the Information Commissioner so concerned? He is not involved in party politics. He is not trying to make party political points. He has a job to do. In the light of the points that he has made, which have been quoted today—indeed, he made others when he gave evidence before the Home Affairs Committee—we should certainly be worried. He told the Committee that if such cards were introduced, there would be a sea change in the relationship between the state and the individual. Are we simply going to dismiss such points, saying that they are of no importance? This is why some of us continue to be so concerned about what is happening.
	I do not believe that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and his Cabinet colleagues have a hidden agenda. I do not believe that they are trying to bring about the kind of society that the Opposition spokesman claimed. I have known a good number of Ministers for many years and I have no reason to doubt their integrity. In my view, they believe that they are acting in the national interest. It is not their integrity but their judgment that I question. On this issue, they are wrong. They have not considered sufficiently all the proposal's implications.
	I realise that it is argued that, regardless of critics in the House of Commons and in the other place, public opinion is more or less in favour of identity cards—but public opinion can shift. One reason why public opinion has so far been in favour is the result of high expectations. It is thought that the problems of illegal immigration, asylum seekers and all the rest of it—problems that we encountered on the doorstep time and again during the election campaign—will all be resolved if only we have identity cards. However, as the cost comes to be more widely known, attitudes will change. Even if we dismiss the figures of the London School of Economics, which may have exaggerated the costs, it is pretty certain that the costs now ventured by the Government are unlikely to be the final costs. Who really believes otherwise?
	I have very carefully considered—it is a matter for me as an individual, as I do not belong to any particular grouping within the parliamentary party—how I should vote. I always knew that I could not vote in favour of the Bill. Given the strong views that I have long held on this issue since the idea of ID cards was first introduced, that would be a form of political prostitution on my part. I asked myself whether I should therefore abstain because I am a supporter of the Government and I want them to do well. As a Labour Member, I obviously want the Government to be re-elected in due course. However much I tried to justify to myself the idea of abstaining, I simply could not do so. I have therefore reached the conclusion that it would be totally wrong—indeed, in some respects even dishonourable—for me to do other than vote against the Bill on Second Reading. That is what I must do.

Mark Oaten: The hon. and learned Gentleman makes my point. The Government state a figure, make out that there is a major problem and suggest that ID cards can solve it. In reality when we break down the figures we realise that the cards will not help to deal with the problem.
	Even if we were to accept that all those problems could be solved by the use of ID cards, and even if we bought into the Government's arguments, from terrorism to ID theft, we would still have to consider whether we can set up such a system at a reasonable cost. That is the most complex part of the debate.
	The Liberal Democrats accept the need to upgrade passports, so we are arguing not against the total cost, but the costs that are additional to what we accept needs to be done under our international responsibilities. However, the problem is that the Government are, yet again, being disingenuous; they are suggesting a level of upgrade for passports that is not actually needed, and in doing so they are trying to hide and bring in the full cost of ID cards under a passport scheme. That is wrong both in my judgment and in that of the authors of the LSE report, who state:
	"We find that the Government is unnecessarily binding the identity card scheme to internationally recognised requirements on passport documents. By doing so, the Government has failed to correctly interpret international standards, generating unnecessary costs, using untested technologies and going well beyond the measures adopted in any other country that seeks to meet international obligations."
	We are gold-plating-plus what is required for the upgrading of passports, and the Government are using that to hide some of the costs of ID cards.
	We do not need to look at the recent LSE report for the costings or to listen to Kable's assessment of the costs; we simply have to look at the Government's own costs to realise that they are spiralling out of control. When the House last debated the costs involved, we were told that the cost for an individual would be about £77 and that the overall cost would be £3.1 billion—yet according to the Government's figures today the cost will be £93 for an individual and the overall total has risen to £5.8 billion. In such a short time, there has been a huge increase. That is not a dodgy LSE report but the Home Office's estimate of the costs.

Mark Oaten: It is certainly much more intrusive than the current system, which involves going to Boots to have a photograph taken and then sending the passport off. We must recognise that the process and the way it is handled will have quite an impact on people who feel uncomfortable about the process of having their fingerprints, face and irises scanned.

Mark Oaten: I want to move on.
	There is another issue, in relation to costs. If the Government are serious about rolling out the scheme to tackle benefit fraud, have they considered the cost of putting scanning machines in all the outlets? We are told, again from Home Office figures, that the reading equipment will cost between £250 and £750. Just putting readers in every single post office would cost £11 million. Interestingly, the Home Secretary seemed to imply that the decision whether to purchase readers would be down to individual authorities. It is interesting, is it not, that health authorities and local government may end up picking up the bill?
	There is one hope in relation to costs: they may ultimately be the way in which we can defeat ID card bills. I want to ask the Minister—he may intervene on me—to clarify what the Prime Minister meant when he said:
	"So you have got a process which you are only at the very beginning of now, but it stands to reason, no government is going to be introducing ID cards if the cost to the public is seen by them as unreasonable."
	Is that a promise that if the figures do rise up, the Government will abandon the scheme, and will the Minister describe what he regards as unreasonable? I regard a scheme that costs £10 billion plus to be an unreasonable scheme.

Mark Oaten: The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. My fear is simply this. Now that the Home Secretary has indicated that in Committee he is prepared to consider putting a cap on the charge, he has bound himself to say that he is only going to charge a certain amount. But we know that the Government will have to find the money somewhere, so it will go on to tax generally. People will either pay for it individually or they will pay for it through general taxation. We believe that that is wrong and that the figure is getting too large.
	Even if one accepted, first, that the proposals had a purpose, and secondly, that this was the right price to pay, one would still have to make the case that the scheme could work, and that is the point at which we reach the issue of the database. There are two questions about the database. The first is whether it is workable. I am not going to rehearse all the arguments, but we know the figures in relation to Government databases; the success rate is pretty appalling. Despite the Home Office success on passports, the general assumption on Government IT schemes is that they go wrong or over budget, or most likely both.
	The second question concerning the database is the crucial issue, which has been touched on by the shadow Home Secretary in particular. The hon. Gentleman referred to the nervousness that Opposition Members feel about what could happen to that database and about who can access it. We might also fast-forward to what we could be doing with that database in 10 or 15 years' time. Technology already exists to use CCTV cameras to recognise faces in public. It is not beyond the reasonable bounds of possibility that one could link those CCTV cameras with the facial scan and then start to link that into the database. I am concerned about that, and I am not alone. The Information Commissioner has said that he is concerned that each development puts in place another component in the infrastructure of a "surveillance society". He is concerned about the way in which demands will grow for individuals to prove their identity; the broad purposes permit function-creep into unforeseen and perhaps unacceptable areas of private life. We must look carefully at what could be done next with the database, as technology progresses.

Mark Oaten: I do not want to get into what may be inaccurate, but I certainly agree that the concerns about such misinformation suddenly becoming accessible to so many individuals are troublesome. If such a system was used in the health services in some way and, for example, a woman presented herself to a doctor about a termination, would that information be held on the database? What other organisations could gain access to it?

George Howarth: No, I said that I was only going to give way once.
	The issue of which freedom is being taken away from whom has not been properly addressed so far, and I have yet to understand it fully myself. The issue would be more clear-cut if from the outset it was made explicit that the scheme should be compulsory. In those circumstances, the arguments about whether or not someone who had to apply for a passport would face a requirement not faced by people who chose not to have passports—essentially, those arguments are about the fair treatment of different individuals—would not arise. Nevertheless, for understandable reasons, the Government have decided to do it this way, and I am prepared to accept the principle behind what they are trying to achieve.
	Three issues need to be addressed as the legislation progresses. Rather than deal with them exhaustively, I shall be brief. First, the issue of cost has been repeatedly raised. It is crucial to maintain the high level of public support for the principle of ID cards. If costs at the end of the process are too high, the value of having an identity card system would have to be demonstrated or it would rapidly become unpopular and lose the public support required for its introduction. Secondly, people must be satisfied about security and the safeguards in place to protect information held on the central register. They have legitimate concerns about who will have access to sensitive information about them and for what purpose. We have not satisfied that concern entirely. Perhaps the Information Commissioner went further than he should have done, but his intervention must be addressed. The Government have to do more to convince people that all the necessary safeguards will be put in place so that such a scheme could be used only in appropriate circumstances and for appropriate reasons.
	Finally, I have not had the opportunity to examine in detail all the evidence about the accuracy of any given system. If we are going to use biometric measures as the Government propose we must all be convinced beyond reasonable doubt that the most accurate recognition possible of biometric data is achievable. I am encouraged by the Cambridge university study that was mentioned but, to be honest, I have not had the opportunity to read it. [Interruption.] Opposition Members seem to think that that is amusing, but they cite studies by various academic bodies with abandon, never having seen them, let alone read them. At least I am honest enough to admit that I have not read that study, and several Opposition Members would have been more honest if they had made such an admission. It is important, however, that that issue is debated thoroughly and that it is demonstrated conclusively that the recognition techniques available are adequate and accurate enough to make the project feasible.
	Those are very much issues for the future. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary started to address them today, but we are not there yet. I am happy, however, to give the Bill a Second Reading in its present form. It is necessary that concerns are addressed adequately over the coming weeks and months but, subject to that caveat, I am happy to vote with the Government tonight.

Douglas Hogg: If the Labour Government are in office when the Bill's provisions bite on the public their reputation will suffer serious and, I hope, terminal damage. Those of us who oppose the Bill are therefore acting in a singularly disinterested manner. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) acknowledged that a number of benefits could flow from an identity cards scheme. I share that view, but those benefits are very much less than the scheme's proponents have argued. It is no coincidence that the advantages that they proclaim have developed while proposals, starting with an entitlement card scheme that made precious little reference to terrorism, have been under discussion. I have a very strong feeling that what we are seeing now is a project seeking a justification, rather than a policy for which there is a self-evident and clear requirement.
	Let me say a word or two about the alleged benefits. I have practised criminal law off and on for many years, and of course I have read many law reports. It is extremely rare that one finds a case in which the existence of an identity card scheme would prevent or lead to the ready detection of crime. The same is true of terrorism. It is no coincidence that the Madrid bombing happened in a country where the mandatory carrying of cards is a part of policy. Let us not forget that Spain has been suffering from ETA terrorism for years and years, or that most of those who carried out the bombing of the world trade centre carried valid identification cards. When one deals with terrorism, the problem is not so much the concealment of identity as the concealment of intent, and that is a wholly different matter.
	The same is true also of fraud. Most fraud does not involve a false statement as to identity. It involves a false statement as to intent, or a concealment or misrepresentation of relevant facts as to entitlement. Identity cards do nothing as to that. Even if identity was a factor, I should be extraordinarily surprised if that problem could not be got around by forgery or by a change in the modus operandi.
	It is ironic that the one area of policy in which identity cards might be significant is in the control of illegal immigration, but only on the basis that the mandatory carrying and production of cards is made part of the policy. That is precisely what would be excluded by the Government proposals.

Douglas Hogg: Indeed. The point has been made that once an identity card scheme is set up as a gateway, all the fraudsters of Europe will be devising ways to use the key into the gateway, and they will succeed. The hon. Lady is entirely right.
	To the extent that there are benefits, they have to be weighed in the balance of cost and disadvantage. As to cost, none of us can be sure what the cost will be, least of all Government Ministers, but I suspect that there are very few Members of the House not sitting on the Government Benches who would place much reliance on the Government's current projections. Almost every Government procurement project that I have ever heard of has grossly overrun its initial budget, most notably the Ministry of Defence with the technology programmes of the kind that we are now contemplating.
	Built into the scheme are factors that will almost certainly escalate the cost considerably. We can be sure that there will be gold-plating on a massive scale. There will be huge staff requirements. The proposal, after all, is that everybody in the country should present themselves at an appointed place at an appointed time to give appointed particulars and answer questions. That has huge staffing implications.
	The Treasury refuses to subsidise the scheme. It will be free-standing. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) will remember, that was the Treasury's initial position when the community charge was introduced, and we all remember what happened to the costs in that scheme. There will be hard cases. Millions of people will assert that they cannot afford ID cards and the cost of subsidising them will fall on other card holders. Also, , as the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) pointed out, there will be renewals and changes. Every time there is a renewal or a change, there will be a charge. Built into the system there is huge pressure for increased cost.
	Will the technology work to an acceptable level? Again, I doubt it. History and common sense argue otherwise. All of us can keep in mind the Child Support Agency and the problems that it has had with computer systems. Those of us who deal with the Criminal Records Bureau know how very slow and incompetent that is. The early stages of the Passport Agency were a calamity. The family tax credit scheme, which depends upon computers entirely, has proved a continuing calamity. We are entitled to say that history and common sense suggest that the technology will frequently fail.
	When the technology fails, ordinary citizens will suffer considerable inconvenience because they suddenly will not be able to assert their personality and will not be able to get the kind of benefits of which the Home Secretary spoke. That is a serious prejudice. A related question is what happens if a card is lost or will not work. Again, people will have to go to an appointed centre at an appointed time with an appointed cheque and give appointed particulars. At some time in the uncertain future somebody might sent them a card. What do they do in the interim if they want access to the public services that the Home Secretary mentioned? Citizens will suffer serious prejudice, on which I hope that the House will ponder.
	I have two final points. First, the policy is too intrusive and therefore is wrong in principle. I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden on that point. The policy imposes obligations on the citizen and gives rights to the state, which should happen only when there is a dire and dark emergency, such as in war. I do not believe that there is a justification at this time.
	Finally, I return to a point that I made to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden about the duty to carry and to produce. I know full well that the Bill as it stands does not incorporate within it any obligation to carry at all times or to produce at all times, and Ministers have given us reassurances on that. But the reassurances of the Government are not a commodity that currently stands in very high esteem. We should not forget that the National Registration Act 1915 also did not provide for any duty to carry and produce; it was amended in 1918. This Bill will also be amended.
	Down the track, when people realise that the Bill, if enacted, is not producing any significant benefits, they will say, "The only way we can make it produce significant benefits, especially in the field of immigration control, is to require people to carry identity cards and to produce them on demand." To make that policy practicable, it must be backed with a power of arrest. I want nothing to do with such a policy. It is wrong in principle. It will produce discord between the societies that we live in and the police. Above all, it will bear heavily upon the ethnic minorities.
	When I first came into the House in 1979, there was a huge debate about the impact of the old sus law. It caused immense dismay among the ethnic minorities. The Bill, if it becomes an Act, will have precisely that consequence, because it will bear heavily upon the ethnic minorities. I do not often give Labour Members disinterested advice, but my strong advice on this occasion is to destroy the Bill before it destroys them.

Lynne Jones: The more people understand the Bill's implications, the more they realise that what is a superficially attractive idea is not only dumb, but very dangerous. Anxiety about the Bill is growing among the labour movement, the trade union movement and, as we have seen, Labour Members.
	The point of principle is not the introduction of an identity document that includes biometrics, which is inevitable, but the creation of a national registration scheme and national database. Notwithstanding the remarks of the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg), I am not het up about the question of whether ID cards should be compulsory, because, as the Government have said, the card will be of limited use on its own.
	In the Government's view, the ability to check the card against the record on the register will make the system secure. Far from providing benefits, however, the establishment of a huge database with everyone's personal details conveniently concentrated in one place could be very dangerous. It would create an ID-theft bonanza for any terrorists or criminals who penetrate the security—let us make no bones about it, they will find ways to penetrate the security. Computer experts have told us that no such database can be 100 per cent. secure, and that point has been proved in America, where the Department of Motor Vehicles database has been attacked.

John Denham: It is quite straightforward. The private sector will not be able to get its hands on the national identity register. However, at present when people ask a solicitor to do their conveyancing, they must go through a sheaf of documents to prove their identity under the money-laundering legislation. In future, they will be able to use their identity cards, and it will be possible for their identity to be verified against the register. I think that wholly acceptable, and a great convenience to citizens. It is entirely different from making the register available to private sector companies.
	I have expressed concern about the procurement process and cross-Government commitment. My third concern relates to the Bill itself. I have not yet managed to obtain a copy of the criticisms made by the Information Commissioner, so I am relying considerably on media coverage and the commissioner's evidence to the Select Committee last year. I think that if his full critique were taken on board, it would be impossible to have an ID card scheme at all. It cannot just be a way of making individuals prove their identity. There are occasions when the state needs to identify the individual. There are security arguments in favour of an audit trail of access to the register, as well as arguments against it. Nevertheless, as well as radically changing their approach to the procurement of the scheme, the Government could make changes to the Bill that would address many of the points made by the commissioner and others.
	The purpose of the scheme could be much more tightly defined. There need be no requirement for an ID card for use of a public service; public services merely need to be permitted to use the card for that purpose, which would leave much more power in the hands of the individual. Access for the police and other services to the information for crime-fighting purposes could be more tightly circumscribed. Under clauses 19 and 23 in their current form, the Home Secretary could personally authorise all access to the audit trail, as is now the case with telephone-tapping. They could also be used to give that power to any individual police constable. It should be possible to amend them to raise the threshold and establish proper safeguards. Oversight could be strengthened, and brought under a single, publicly accountable commissioner rather than being unhappily spread between two.
	I presume, at the moment, that the Government will win the debate and the vote this evening. I certainly hope that they will. Our present circumstances, however, bear some similarity to a situation that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will recognise from a year or so ago, when the Government's discussion of tuition fees began. At that stage, the Government's proposals were not at all bad in principle, but they needed a fair bit of work in the House to be pushed into an acceptable form, which I think we finally achieved. I believe that the ID card scheme is in a similar state. The Government need to make changes both in the way in which they plan to deal with the legislation—and there have been welcome indications today that it is open to amendment—and, fundamentally, in the way in which they are attempting to procure the project. There must be proper, independent, technical public debate.
	Finally, let me say something about the scope of the Bill. We hear a good deal of talk about "function creep". That will result largely not from the desires of an overbearing state, but from the desire of members of the public to use the information to fight crime. I think it would be more prudent for the Government to recognise that, and not to leave powers in the Bill that might be handy at some point in the future but to limit the powers tightly, confident that the Bill can return to the House of Commons in the future if public arguments favour broader legislation.

Peter Lilley: It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) who has made a cogent case against many of the practical aspects of the Bill.
	One thing that is clear is that the Identity Cards Bill is not, as the Home Secretary would have us believe, a gleaming, new Labour modernising measure. I make no apology for reminding the House that it is a shop-soiled, tired old measure that had been hawked round Whitehall for many years before the Government even came to power—proposals for a compulsory, all-singing, all-dancing identity card with biometrics. It was then, and is now, a solution looking for a problem. When we tried to examine how effective it would be at solving the potential problems, we found that the police said that they rarely had any problem in identifying suspects, only in proving that they were guilty. We also found that terrorists normally conceal their intentions rather than their identities, that benefit fraudsters normally misrepresent their circumstances, and that less than 2 per cent. of benefit fraud is due to identity fraud. Furthermore, all illegal immigrants can—and most do once they come into contact with the authorities—apply for asylum, at which point they must have an identity card at present, complete with fingerprints on it. At that point, of course, they become exempt from deportation until their asylum claim has been resolved—if ever.
	Therefore, the identity card would not help with any of the problems that it is put forward to help unless, possibly, it were made compulsory for everyone to have one and the police were empowered in particular to stop people who they thought looked or sounded foreign to identify whether they had identity cards or were possibly in the country illegally.
	The Government say that things have changed since those days, and that they now have support from officials in Departments, the police and unnamed figures in the security services. That should be no surprise—Government employees are paid to support Government policy, and it is particularly of no surprise that the Government found people in the security forces who will say that the proposal is a good thing, as they were the people who told us that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Indeed, when I tabled questions trying to identify which of the agencies and who in the agencies endorsed Government policies, I found that the Government were very reluctant to give the identities of the people who are so keen to have us reveal our identities to them—I suspect, of course, that the person is John Scarlett, but that is in the privacy of this Chamber.
	The real test of whether Departments find the identity card useful is whether they are prepared to contribute from their budget to funding the proposal for a compulsory identity card system. Clearly, none is prepared to contribute, which is why the entire cost is to be borne by the ordinary citizen and user, who will eventually be compelled to have it, and certainly required to have it if they want a passport. We also know that the costs will rise. They have already risen, and the one thing that I learnt in Government is that the projects that are most vulnerable to running into difficulties and overrunning on cost are those with more than one user and client Department. This one has at least half a dozen user and client Departments. We know that the Government abandoned a project that I initiated—the pathway project for a benefit payment card. After saying for two years that it was going splendidly, they finally said that they had to abandon it because they could not reconcile the conflicting demands of Post Office Counters and the Department for Work and Pensions, which were jointly responsible for it. If they could not reconcile the demands of those two bodies, how will they reconcile the demands that will arise when half a dozen different Departments seek to make the system work for their needs?
	Let me give another concrete example. In America four years ago, Congress mandated the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to reconcile their different systems for collecting and computerising fingerprints. Four years and $40 million-worth of expenditure later, they can transfer the fingerprints of only 2 per cent. of people entering the United States so that they can be compared with and checked against the FBI register. It still takes a month for a new terrorist suspect identified by the FBI to be fed across so that they can have their fingerprints taken and be checked against anyone entering the country. So we know that these systems are very difficult and costly to get right. If America cannot get them right, even with its huge expenditure, there is no reason to suppose that we will find it easy to do so. This card has been said by some to be a plastic poll card, but it could be Labour's modern-day ground nut scheme. Either way, it will cost a lot of money and will probably achieve very little.
	In addition to the involvement of a multiplicity of Departments, the Government have moved from prime reason to prime reason as to why they are introducing this measure. Before the election, the prime reason was combating terrorism. Incidentally, when the Government introduced their proposed entitlement card—as it was then called—and listed the 10 uses to which it would be put, they did not include combating terrorism. That was not thought a practical and useful thing to do. But if this card were really going help in combating terrorism, would we wait until 2013 to make it compulsory? We would surely want to do so now, just as ID cards were introduced immediately in the second world war. If this card were really going to help in identifying and checking out potential terrorists, would we not include within its provisions the 24 million people who come here every year on a visa for business purposes or as tourists for a short-term stay—at least, that is what they say when they enter the country—rather than excluding them from any requirement to have one?
	It is true that some years ago, when considering the terrorist problem in Ulster, I suggested that identity cards might be helpful, but I was persuaded by the powerful argument of the security forces to the effect that—contrary to what the hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Robinson) said—any benefits that they would derive in terms of combating IRA terrorism would be greatly offset by the problems they would face in enforcing compliance were a minority of the community to resist the use of ID cards. That is a problem that we may well face if we try to introduce this measure, particularly given that—as we now know, and as the Government acknowledge—its principal purpose is to deal with unlawful terrorism. That is certainly the principal demand of the public.
	The general public mistakenly believe that most members of ethnic minorities are immigrants, which is not true—of course, most of them were born here and have British nationality—and that most immigrants came here illegally, which is not true either: most came here legally. The general public therefore believe that the police need to have the power to compel people to have these cards about their person at all times, and to have the right to stop and question anyone who looks or sounds foreign, in order to get them to justify their presence in this country. I find that abhorrent, and I am astonished that that there is any Member in this House who does not find it abhorrent that our fellow citizens, just because they are a different colour or have a different accent, could be constantly required by the police—and will be, ineluctably, if this measure is on the statute book—to justify their presence in this country, simply to satisfy the mistaken belief on the part of many people that such a requirement will help to control illegal immigration, which it will not.
	This is a fundamental change in the relationship between the citizen and the state. Such a change has only ever been introduced in countries that had authoritarian, fascist or communist Governments. It has never been introduced in a country with a common-law system, and I hope that we will not set the appalling example of adopting that system here today.

Austin Mitchell: Many Members who have spoken today have expressed concern about the civil liberties aspect of the Bill. I propose to ignore that and to deal with what concerns me, as a practical Yorkshireman—namely, the practical and political issues. This Bill is unnecessary. It sets up a system that will not work, will not achieve its stated objectives and will cost us a fortune. Apart from that, there is nothing much wrong with it.
	What I am concerned about is the Bill's impact, which is beautifully timed. Its provisions, along with their damaging consequences, will be introduced just as the Labour Government—the force for progress in this country—go into the next and the subsequent elections. The compulsory element will be introduced at the subsequent election, but in reality, it will be introduced before that. Anyone who wants to renew a passport or a driving licence, or anyone who the Secretary of State deems shall be compelled to have an identity card, will have to have such a card. So although the scheme is said to be voluntary, it is in fact already compulsory. The Bill is like "super dome". It involves massive expenditure that is timed to ruin the election prospects of a Labour Government who we want to carry on so that they can continue with their programme of social reform.
	Like the dome, identity cards seemed like a good idea at the time, but the dome has proved to be disastrous. I suppose that that is how things work in a presidential system. The source of such ideas is Downing street, where the Prime Minister is surrounded by a heavenly nimbus of cherub geniuses, fluttering in the blue skies that always hover over Downing street. Up comes an idea, lights flash, thunder rolls and the idea is unveiled to an excited world. "I know", they say, "Let's have identity cards. It's a big measure that shows that the Government are active. It will appeal to the police and the Home Office." Of course, the police and the Home Office are obsessed with people control. Indeed, they would implant all children with chips at birth if they could.
	Such ideas appeal to Home Secretaries, who have a career to think of, after all, and who want to be promoted out of being Home Secretary so that they do not have to face such issues any more. Now that we have the idea, all that we need is a problem for it to solve. That is where the doubts begin.

Douglas Hogg: Is there not an additional element in the cost, which has not been taken into account? Other parties have made it plain that they will not implement the scheme. That being the case, either the contractors will impose a very high penalty cost in the contract or there will be a very high premium—neither of which have been allowed for by the Government Front Benchers.

Austin Mitchell: That is absolutely true, and I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for putting that point, which he omitted from his own speech. I entirely agree with him, and each escalation of costs will mean increasing loss of support for the whole scheme.
	Several speakers have pointed to the dilemma between "must have" and "must carry". There is no point in having "must have" without having "must carry". One will surely follow the other as night follows day, but the Government are now telling us that they will not have a "must carry" rule because it will affront middle-class opinion. There are some who want identity cards for other people but not for themselves, just as we all want discipline imposed on other people's children but not necessarily on our own, and there is a danger that that section of opinion will be affronted.
	Of course, the cards will be made compulsory to carry. What is the point of having an ID system that allows people to respond to police requests to produce the card by saying, "I am sorry, but I do not have the card with me"? It sometimes happens to me when I forget my pass and I am sometimes asked to report to the police station tomorrow morning, and I disappear into the night—or, in the case of Grimsby, into the sea. The one will follow the other.

Tom Harris: I congratulate the hon. Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr. Cox) on his maiden speech. We could be forgiven for not realising that it was a maiden speech, so confident was his delivery. I am sure that he will have no problem in articulating the concerns of his constituents in years to come, and I wish him every success in doing so.
	I have some concerns about the debate so far. Some of the arguments against ID cards, especially those from Opposition Members, have not been as measured as we could have hoped. For example, the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg), who is unfortunately not in his place, did a fantastic and articulate job of opposing all manner of measures that are not to be found in the Bill. On several occasions, we have heard from Conservative and Liberal Members about the threat to rights that we have held for hundreds of years, but that is not what the debate is about, as seen from outside the House. I am concerned that those watching the debate will recognise the synthetic indignation of Opposition Members for the cynical manipulation that it is intended to be, or might find that their own fears and suspicions are simply being encouraged.
	ID cards are not a panacea and never will be. They will not provide foolproof defence against terrorism, identity theft and other crime, or health tourism. However, they represent a sensible and moderate proposal and will be one of a range of tools at the disposal of the Government to deal with all those matters.
	The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) mentioned that "1984" was a warning, not a textbook. As I have said, some of the contributions from Opposition Members were cynical and inaccurate. They are cynical because there is a danger of playing on the existing cynicism that the public feel toward those who govern and those who seek to govern. I make no apologies for holding the unpopular view that government is a good thing and politicians are good people. We should encourage members of the public to trust the Government. [Interruption.] Well, that is a proposal that will not gain currency even in this House, let alone in the country.
	It is dangerous to the art of politics for us continually to encourage people to feel so cynical and sceptical of the motives of political parties, especially the two main parties that aspire to government. I do not include the Liberal Democrats in that particular criticism.
	The right hon. Gentleman said, on the one hand, that ID cards would not be effective. On the other, he said that the Government were promising surveillance from the cradle to the grave. What is the Conservatives' main reason for opposing the Bill? Is it because ID cards will work or because they will not work? It is always a cheap political trick to raise the spectre of Orwell in comparison with Britain today. Those people who say that Britain is turning into Orwell's "1984" are usually those who have not read the book.
	We live in a different and dangerous era, compared with any other time in our history. However, the right hon. Gentleman seems to live in an Ealing-comedy world, where we all have a cheery word for each other and the biggest threat to society comes from a plot to rob banks and turn gold bullion into ornamental Eiffel towers. I will break it gently to the Opposition: we do not live in that world. We live in a world where terrorists attempt to kill innocent people by strapping dynamite to themselves. We live in a world where criminals prey on members of the public and seek to steal their very identity.
	The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden said that if he had predicted 10 years ago that a Labour Government would abolish habeas corpus and trial by jury and introduce house arrest and ID cards, he would have been locked up. Perhaps that is true, but if he had suggested 10 years ago that four planes would be hijacked in America and piloted into the twin towers and the Pentagon he would presumably have suffered similar treatment.

Tom Harris: I reserve the right to disagree with the Information Commissioner. The House has the right and the duty to make its own judgments, and not simply to take advice and act on information from outside. Going slightly off the point, there was a similar argument last year about information handed down to us from on high by the Electoral Commission. Do we do exactly what the commission tells us or do we make our own judgments as democratically elected politicians? We should do the latter.
	We live in a world where the old certainties and securities of years gone by no longer exist. Three years ago in Glasgow, asylum seekers who had identity cards that included biometric details were hunted by the police, because they were suspected of involvement in a serious assault on a bouncer in a Glasgow club. The police could not track them down initially but they were finally apprehended at Stranraer as they tried to board a ferry for Northern Ireland using fake passports. They had disposed of their ID cards, but because they had had to give their fingerprint details when they applied for asylum, their identities were confirmed within four minutes and they were arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. As I said earlier, I do not believe that ID cards are a panacea in the fight against crime, organised crime or terrorism but we should be able to see past our party affiliations to understand that provisions in the Bill will, given a fair wind, take us some way towards beating criminal organisations.
	In June 2001, 15 minutes before I took my seat in the House, I received word that a credit card and cheque book that my wife had sent me from Glasgow had gone missing in the post, and I discovered that more than £400 had been taken from my accounts in various forms. That was extremely distressing and may be why I did not enjoy the re-election of the Speaker as much as I would have in other circumstances. It was an extremely distressing and emotional experience to know that someone was pretending to be me—using my name and spending my money, although I managed to claim it back. What can be wrong with giving people a foolproof way of proving their identity? Some people have asked why we should have to prove our identity.

Martin Horwood: One of the problems with the Bill is not the use to which it would be put by a reasonable Government—I assume that the hon. Gentleman thinks that his Government are reasonable—but the uses to which it might be put by an unreasonable Government—[Hon. Members: "We have one".] I was thinking more of the party to my right. Is not half the problem that there is no guarantee or safeguard that once data has been collected it would not be abused by a future Government?

Tim Farron: The opening sentence in the Library briefing on the Bill states:
	"Identity cards existed in the United Kingdom during the two world wars, but there has been no national scheme since."
	That innocently sums up why the Bill must not go further in its passage through the House. ID card schemes, if they are to exist at all, are features of times of war and national crisis. This is not a time of war, no matter how much the Government may tell us otherwise.
	In February 2002, the then Home Secretary said in this place that the terrorist attacks on the United States of 11 September 2001 gave impetus to the ID scheme. However, the current Home Secretary concedes that that does not stack up, as the 9/11 hijackers used their own names and the Madrid bombers all held legitimate ID cards. Of course, it is plausible that the terrorist attacks in the US and in Spain could have been avoided if there had been greater investment in the security services of those countries: for instance, on additional policing. The lesson that a more security-conscious Government might have learned is that additional resources are required for those matters rather than spending a fortune on a dangerous piece of gesture politics.
	Last week, in Kendal in my constituency, I met senior police offices who told me that at times they have insufficient resources to tackle antisocial behaviour and serious disorder problems. I merely juxtapose that state of affairs with the Government's commitment to waste billions of pounds on a flawed ID card scheme so as to indulge their authoritarian instincts. The Government are prepared therefore, to coin a phase, to be soft on yobs and put at risk the safety of hard-working families in order to wilfully take their eye off the ball and indulge their authoritarian instincts, as I have said.
	The ID system would fundamentally and irrevocably change the traditional British model of policing from a community-based approach to a data-driven approach. The ability of the police to win trust from communities, especially minority communities, would be undermined severely. The effectiveness of on-the-ground policing would be damaged in return for no benefit whatsoever.
	This unjustified and dangerous shift in culture is acknowledged at the highest level. We have already heard the comments that the Information Commissioner has made about the national identity register, but he also commented a little earlier that
	"the introduction of such a register marks a sea change in the relationship between the state and the individual."
	In the same article in which he made that warning, he made additional warnings about function creep, which is a sore point for the Government, and they keep reassuring us that function creep will not occur. At this point I remind Members of the House that the last ID card scheme, scrapped in 1952, was set up with the stated intention of providing identity checks with regard to no more than two functions of the state, and despite those assurances, and during peacetime, by the time the ID card was abolished the number of functions had expanded to 39—under a Labour Government.
	We are told, I am sure sincerely, that the ID card scheme would not allow for records to be kept on details of religious belief, political affiliation, sexuality, trade union membership, racial origin or other such inappropriate information, but do I really have to remind the House that Parliament cannot bind its successors, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Horwood) just pointed out? What we are being asked to agree to in the Bill is the not-so-thin end of an authoritarian wedge.
	Let us for a moment envisage a Government more authoritarian, intrusive and control-freakish than this one, and let us imagine what they might do with a ready-made ID card scheme. I am not talking about some unlikely, nightmarish totalitarian regime. Labour MPs might just care to contemplate the ways in which the democratically elected Conservative Government of the 1980s might have used an ID card system to police the enforcement of the poll tax, or in reaction to the coldest period of the cold war, or indeed—most chilling of all, perhaps—how they might have dealt with the "enemy within" throughout the year-long miners' strike. That exercise should fill genuine Labour Members with dread and send a shiver down their spine, and yet here we are, with Labour MPs currently prepared to sleepwalk into an attack on traditional British values and liberties.
	It is entirely appropriate to question the Government's authority and democratic legitimacy in introducing the Bill in the face of mounting evidence of the scheme's ineffectiveness, expense and threats to traditional freedoms. The Government must acknowledge, however uncomfortable it makes them feel, that, manifesto pledge or not, 64 per cent. of the British people voted against the present Government, and whether they like it or not, to impose this vast change to our civil culture is at best dubious in the light of that; so to take this illiberal and transparently populist step at all is bad enough, but to do so despite mounting costs and mounting evidence of the impotence of ID card schemes is at best downright sinister.
	The Government have spent the past two days investing their energies in rubbishing university academics. No doubt the Home Secretary wishes that the national identity register was already in place, so that he could simply rub out the professorial ranks of the London School of Economics—people who are clearly enemies of the state, and who had the audacity to conduct this most impressive and comprehensive body of research on the ID card scheme and its likely costs, efficacy and impact.
	The recent LSE study shows, as we have heard, that the reality of the calculation of the costs of the scheme is in excess of £10 billion and anything up to £19 billion. We have heard no credible rebuttal of that calculation from anyone on the Labour side. The Government are nevertheless, to give them credit, adamant that the LSE is wrong and that others—such as the IT consultants Kable, who put the likely costs at about £15 billion—are equally wrong, but the Government cannot come up with a fixed figure themselves. The official cost to individuals of £93 per head is, we are told, "merely indicative".
	The irony is that at the same time as the Government are attempting to attack the credibility of the independent LSE research, they are confidently telling us, on the basis of the flimsiest of evidence, that the economy loses £1.3 billion a year on ID fraud. That is just one of the many reasons that they are giving to explain the need for an ID card system.
	The official rationale for the ID card scheme may change week by week, but as we have just heard from the hon. Member for Glasgow, South (Mr. Harris), the underlying theme of that rationale remains the same in each case. That rationale is one of fear—the propagation and incitement of fear. The politicians with authoritarian instincts need to sow and cultivate fear amongst the public in order to contrive public acquiescence in or consent to their authoritarian schemes. And yet we have already heard that even George Bush, Junior, who followed the 9/11 bombings with some of the most outrageous attacks on the fundamental personal freedoms of United States citizens, was persuaded that an ID card scheme was a reactionary step too far.
	We have already heard about the flaws in biometric testing, and we heard earlier about Cambridge university academics who apparently backed the Government. Well, I can quote one: Professor Ross Anderson of Cambridge university, who clearly does not. He stated:
	"I am afraid that iris scanners like fingerprint scanners are liable to be defeated by sophisticated attack".
	A system where it is possible to identify innocent people incorrectly or it is possible for persons of malign intent to get around the scheme is worse from a security point of view than having no scheme at all.
	Perhaps the Secretary of State will be so good as to inform the House of the current percentage of citizens in this country who do not register on the electoral roll. He will no doubt agree with me that the enormous majority of those people omit themselves from the register for no nefarious reason whatever—not through any attempt to defraud or attack anyone, but for a range of legitimate explanations. Included in that group are people fleeing domestic violence, people with transient lifestyles, people with frequently changing personal information, and people suffering mental illness or addictions, all of whom may fear or simply never get round to disclosing their information. The same groups will approach the ID card scheme with even greater anxiety. Many will rightly or wrongly simply not register and will disappear, incapable then of accessing basic public services, removing themselves from civil society.
	In closing, I wish to appeal to right hon. and hon. Members' concerns about traditional British freedoms, their concerns about excessive costs, their concerns about the integrity and the reliability of the technology, and their concerns about the effectiveness of ID card systems based on all the available evidence. But if that does not work, I seek to appeal to naked self-interest. Based even on the Government's own understated account of the costs of the scheme, we could have 12,000 additional police officers for the price that we are being asked to pay for ID cards. A quick breakdown of the figures shows that 50 of those new police officers would be in my constituency of Westmorland and Lonsdale. Those new officers would be able to provide enhanced protection to Ministers when they make occasional visits to their Lake district second homes.

Douglas Carswell: I begin my maiden speech by honouring those who preceded me as Member of Parliament for Harwich and Clacton: the late Sir Julian Ridsdale, who sat for the constituency for many years with his wife, Paddy. I say "with his wife, Paddy" because, as hon. Members who remember Sir Julian will know, Lady Ridsdale was part of everything that he did. Julian and Paddy could not have been kinder or more encouraging to me as a newly selected candidate.
	Ian Sproat, who came after Sir Julian, was also wise and generous with his advice. Ivan Henderson, who represented the seat until the last general election, was perhaps less generous with his advice about how I could win the seat, but he was generous in his commitment to the people of Harwich. Hon. Members on both sides of the House will recognise that he was a very diligent, good and committed Member of Parliament for his constituency.
	Today, my constituency is a mixture of seaward settlements and their Essex hinterland: the port of Harwich; the lovely town of Frinton-on-Sea; Walton-on-the-Naze; Jaywick; Dovercourt; my home town of Clacton-on-Sea; and the villages of Thorpe-le-Soken, Kirby-le-Soken and Holland-on-Sea—a corner of England that is fiercely English. Never in my life have I felt as proud and as honoured as I do now, speaking for the people whom I represent in the House.
	I rise to make my maiden speech in this debate today because my constituents are deeply worried—I am sure that many hon. Members' constituents are, too—about the rise in crime, in violence, in the yob culture and the rise in what one might term uncivil society, and because we are told so often that ID cards are the answer. As this is my maiden speech, I shall leave it to others to question whether they are the answer. I leave it to others to question whether they will make us more secure and whether the high cost of the scheme might mean that they are a plastic poll tax. Instead, I wish to make a broader observation: if the House is today debating the merits of a scheme that will make the citizen more accountable to the police and the agencies of the state, one day I hope that it will also debate measures to make the police and the state more accountable to the citizen.
	Over the past generation or so, under Governments of both parties, crime and disorder have risen. ID cards are not the answer to reversing that trend because making people more answerable to the police is not the solution. Perhaps part of the answer lies in making the police more locally accountable to communities such as Harwich and Clacton.
	Having been out on the beat with the local police in my constituency, I have been impressed by their professionalism and dedication, yet all too often they are upwardly accountable to a distant bureaucracy. They are all too often unable to take effective action against crime and the yob culture because they answer to a remote and unaccountable elite. Remote elites set the police's priorities, local people take the rap and no one is accountable—that is how our local communities are policed today. In the place of more upward accountability—identity cards—we should have a policy based on the principles of downward accountability; decentralisation and localism; and direct democracy—not identity cards. We should let local people elect their police chiefs and let local police chiefs set their police priorities. Why stop at policing? Let us localise control of, and accountability for, a range of public services. We should take power over key public services from central quangos and put it in the hands of local people.
	I am surely not alone in having detected during the recent election a sense of frustration—alienation, even—on the doorstep. Hon. Members on both sides of the House must have come across the same thing. On doorstep after doorstep, people felt that elections did not matter any more. They thought that no party could clean up their hospital, get their child into a preferred school, or stop mobile phone masts from being built in their neighbourhood. That should worry us all. Turnout remains low because people are increasingly giving up on the democratic process. If we want to be respected in this House, we should make elections matter again.
	Local communities should be able to determine their priorities for policing, planning and education. My constituents should be able to determine the future of the local library and the Leas school in Clacton, the location of mobile phone masts on the seafront and the number of GP surgeries in Holland-on-Sea. No less importantly, those who make decisions should be directly vulnerable at the ballot box. Elected representatives have lost ground to unelected officials at every level and, if I am honest, that has happened under both Labour and Conservative Governments. A consequence of that process is that elections are becoming increasingly perfunctory.
	Powers have steadily leaked from the House: sideways to the judges, downwards to the regional assemblies and agencies and upwards to Europe. At every level, the elected politician who is accountable to the electorate has lost ground to the unelected functionary, but that must stop. My constituents have had enough of being told what to do by remote elites. They want to make their own decisions. They want those who run their local policing, primary care trust and schooling to be more, not less, accountable to them. They want local decisions to be in the hands of local people.
	I shall do my best to articulate those concerns and desires in the House. I am here to argue for the devolution of powers outwards and downwards. We need to reverse the flow of powers that has taken place over the past 30 years from town halls to Whitehall and from the citizen to the state. We should take powers away from the greatest quango of them all, namely, the European Commission.
	I shall spend my time speaking and voting in the House for a wholesale decentralisation of powers from the remote elites to the people—from the unelected and unaccountable to local communities such as Harwich and Clacton. I shall speak up for an independent Britain trading with Europe and beyond, yet governing ourselves once again, living under our own Parliament, making our own laws. It is a privilege to have the opportunity to begin that today.

Nick Palmer: I congratulate the hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Carswell) on his eloquent speech. I am sure that we will hear a great deal more from him in the months and years to come. I think that we all appreciated his kind remarks about his predecessor, who we all remember with affection.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), who is temporarily out of the Chamber, suggested that the concept of ID cards came from No. 10 Downing street and he compared it with the millennium dome. I did two things soon after my election in 1997, when I was as new a Member as the hon. Member for Harwich: first, I urged the Government to drop their support for the Conservative dome project—that did wonders for my career, I must say—and secondly, I introduced a Bill to provide for identity cards. I am happy to say that that Bill had the unqualified support of the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten), so I am sorry that he has temporarily changed his mind.
	We have had an interesting debate because, if I understood it correctly, both the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats gave a commitment to repeal the scheme if they were to win the next election, regardless of the money spent by that point and the benefits still to come. The hon. Member for Winchester demanded an assurance from the Conservatives that they would stop the scheme and I understood that the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), gave such an assurance, so we look forward to returning to that point.
	Both in this debate and in the wider debate outside Parliament, there have been amazing examples of misleading or misunderstood information, so I would like to nail a few of the myths that we have heard. The right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) said that no country had introduced identity cards unless it had a communist or fascist regime. I hope that when he leaves the House he will write a book about the communist regime in Switzerland or the fascist regime in Switzerland—that would be quite a revelation.
	This week, The Sunday Telegraph devoted an entire editorial to the Government's proposition to make it compulsory to carry an ID card, but that is simply not the case. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden, in his restful speech, suggested that it was necessary to make it compulsory to carry a card if identity was to be checked. He appeared to be unaware of the fact that the police can check fingerprints against the central database, regardless of whether the card is carried. In fact, that is the main point of the database, which can be used to check someone's identity, irrespective of whether the card is carried.

Nick Palmer: That is right, but at the moment it applies only to people who have previously come into contact with the police. Under the Bill, however, if I tell the police that I am the hon. Member for Broxtowe they should be able to verify immediately whether that is the case or whether I am fibbing. Making that possible is in my interest, and it is also in the interests of the police and society.
	The hon. Member for Winchester said that people who were authorised to verify identity could see whether the person whose identity was being verified had had an abortion. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden even suggested that a virus could be introduced into the system. Both Members envisaged a programmable personal computer but, as someone who has worked in IT for most of my life, I would like to see the fingerprint reader that enables someone to introduce a virus. They do not understand how the system will work in practice.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) was genuinely concerned that free public services would pre-empt the vote on compulsion. He suggested that even though we are unlikely to decide to make the scheme compulsory until the next Parliament—obviously, we will do so only if the scheme has been successful—schools, clinics and other public services such as benefit offices could require the production of an identity card or proof connected to the identity register before agreeing to offer their services. He said, very reasonably, that it would become compulsory for people using those services to have an ID card, even if we do not vote on such a measure in this Parliament. Clause 15, however, states that public services can only require such checks on people who have been specified under clause 6 following votes in the Commons and the other place. An affirmative vote is needed in both Houses before any group can be required by any public service compulsorily to produce an ID card to confirm their identity.
	The purpose of the card is simple—it is to verify that we are the person we claim to be—no more, no less. It is proposed to store data that are already recorded in passport and other databases and link them to biometric data so that we can see that that information relates to ourselves, and not to someone else. I have campaigned for that for a number of years, ever since I first introduced the proposal in Parliament. I have rarely met constituents who do not regard it as a good idea in principle. They do not see a problem in using basic information already stored about us to verify that we are who we claim to be.

Nick Palmer: I agree with my hon. Friend. That summarises public opinion at the moment. Most people think that it is a good scheme that makes sense. They do not have much patience with the civil liberties argument, but they do not want to spend a lot of money. I am glad that the Home Secretary said that before the Bill leaves the House we will get firm figures on the likely maximum cost, as the public needs to see those figures.

Nick Palmer: I am awfully sorry. I am running short of time. I apologise, as my hon. Friend offered to give way to me.
	I want to be careful not to make exaggerated claims. Hon. Members have argued that ID cards would fail because they did not prevent the Madrid bombing. I do not claim that they are some sort of magical device that detects evil impulses in people's brains and alerts the police. ID cards are a practical tool that helps to identify the victims and the perpetrators, as they did in Spain. I do not claim that the police will never again make a mistake in identification. I say only that it makes sense to make that very much rarer than it is now. If one has been accused of something that someone else has done, it will be very much easier to demonstrate that one is not the person involved. That could save many hours at the police station.
	I am also not saying the proposals are perfect. For example, the key issue for society is not the card, but the database. AS we are not requiring people to carry the card, we can reasonably make it optional to take it, thereby reducing the cost and the perceived intrusion. Let us say that people must register, but whether they have the card is up to them.
	The proposal is not a solution to everything. It is, however, a sensible, practical idea to make our society simpler and safer. It is also a manifesto commitment on which we were elected less than two months ago. Let us do it.

Neil Gerrard: The more I consider the Bill, the more I am convinced that the problem is not the identity card but the database that lies behind it. It is inevitable that registration on the database will become compulsory. There is no prospect of that not happening. Once that has happened, it is again inevitable that it will become compulsory to produce the card, at least for specific processes, such as access to some public services. We are then likely to reach the point when it is compulsory to carry the card. If that happens—I believe that it will, in those stages—it will fundamentally change the relationship between the individual citizen and the state. If is futile to pretend otherwise.
	We are being asked to approve the specification, commissioning and construction of probably one of the most complex databases that has ever been built. There is no international experience of building such databases. The system will involve three biometrics and a large population database, which will be used for a multiplicity of purposes. Hon. Members who spoke both in favour and against the proposals have missed some of the points about what the construction of such a database means.
	The database will be different from those with which we have already had to deal. Many of the databases that exist now do not have cope with the problem of people who do not want to be on them or who fail to register for them. Some people will not wish to register on the proposed database on principle. Others, such as those with chaotic lifestyles, will fail to register. As we have heard, that also applies to people with some disabilities.
	Millions of non-British citizens will be on the database. It must be permanently accessible from a wide range of public and private locations for it to perform any of the functions that are claimed for it. It is simply not comparable with existing systems.
	If I were asked to propose an organisation to produce such a structure, the Home Office would not be high on my list. There has been no proper explanation of the construction of the database. If we are to have a clean database, which will be the gold standard, I want to hear how the information will be validated and verified. I have not heard that. I want to know how the enrolment centres will conduct the process. If faulty data appear from the beginning, the database cannot work from day one.
	The Bill is a recipe for disaster. Some of the myths of what it is supposed to achieve have already been discussed this evening and I shall not repeat them, because of lack of time. They include tackling terrorism, benefit fraud and identity theft, which is not clearly defined. Claiming that the answer to identity theft is an identity card is a non-sequitur unless one specifies what identity theft involves and how it is carried out.
	We are told that the police want identity cards. I do not believe that they do. They want a national database, which will become a national biometric register. That will allow them to check up not only on those who have been involved with crime previously but on anyone on whom they wish to make any sort of check.
	These are ill-thought-out proposals.
	I have no objection to passports and biometrics, but I want the database to disappear. I cannot support the proposals otherwise. It would be possible to produce an ID smartcard that would perform a good many of the required functions and would also be much more secure. Any IT expert will tell us that putting all our eggs in one basket will not work.
	The Government have said that they want to listen and want to talk to us. The programme motion does not convince me of that. If we are really to have a debate about the evidence and the detail of that evidence, we cannot do so in three weeks.
	There is no way I can vote for the Bill, and I will certainly vote against the programme motion, because it will kill the possibility of the genuine debate that we ought to have.

Kali Mountford: I have a copy of the "LSE Identity Project Report", and I found in it part of a sentence with which I agree. It states:
	"The success of a national identity system depends on a sensitive, cautious and cooperative approach involving all key stakeholder groups".
	I have found little else in the report with which to agree, so I shall examine that proposition.
	First, the approach must be "sensitive". Some people may believe that the scheme may be prejudiced in its operation and that their identities will be sought unnecessarily and unfairly, either because of their ethnic origin or something else different about them. However, we hear such points from the Conservatives who, even after the Stephen Lawrence report, refused to accept that there was institutional racism in the police. The best way to deal with institutional racism that would lead to people being identified because of their race, religion or other difference is to address the problems in the police force, not to deny people the opportunity of identifying themselves properly and having proper protection before the law.
	Secondly, the approach must also be "cautious". Well, the Bill is extremely cautious. The cautious, incremental approach to introducing the measures means that some hon. Members are running away with the most imaginative ideas we have seen for some time. Indeed, their suggestions are matched only by the imagination of my constituents who want to extend the Bill ever further to include even more situations in which their identity should be protected or produced. For example, people in my constituency want medical records to be included in the database. I do not think that that is a good idea, and it is not covered in the Bill. It is important that when somebody requires medical treatment, they receive it on presentation before a doctor and are not asked questions at that point, especially in an emergency. However, it is proper and appropriate that people should pay for the services if they are not entitled to them.
	While my constituents let their imaginations run away with them, so do several hon. Members. Some of the suggestions I have heard today are extraordinary descriptions of the powers in the Bill. The power to protect us from the things that hon. Members have mentioned are included in other legislation that the House has already accepted. Moreover, the protection that we seek in being able to have our identities checked already exists, irrespective of the Bill.
	Thirdly, the approach must be co-operative. Well, many of the surveys that have been conducted show that many people would be most co-operative with the legislation, because they desperately want to see it introduced. The co-operation must be between the service providers and the recipients, and that would be improved if both could be certain that they were receiving what they were entitled to. That co-operation must be built up, and we must use secondary legislation, which some people disparage, at appropriate stages to ensure that if we extend the powers of the Bill to other services, we provide the type of entitlement card that we envisaged originally.
	The next point was about key stakeholders, and for me, they must be my constituents. They have told me loudly and clearly, in numbers, that they support the principle of an ID card—more than 90 per cent. of them responded to a survey. They also told me to exercise caution, as there are some cost issues that they do not like. They want certainty about the costs and, especially, that people who cannot afford a card will be properly protected. I ask Ministers to ensure that the provisions of the Bill will allow for exemptions and exceptions to payment. We should do that carefully and considerately and look at how we can reduce or discount payments for people who cannot afford them. If we do that, we shall build up the safeguards and give my key stakeholders the protection they want.

Alan Simpson: I do not have any problems with identity cards. I have several of them. I have a passport, a driving licence, a bank card, a credit card, a supermarket loyalty card, an NHS card and probably several others that I have forgotten about. None of these is perfect and secure and we all have our horror stories about what happens when they get stolen, go missing or get misused. But we continue to use them, for two reasons: one, because it is our choice to use them, and two, because there is an assumption that we have reasonably, or tolerably, secure firewalls between them. When I go on holiday, I present my passport but I am not asked to present the shopping list from my last visit to the supermarket. When I go to renew my driving licence, I am not asked whether my credit card can stand it. When I go to the bank, they do not ask when I last went to the doctor. The dangers in the Bill are that by putting all those information systems into one card, it creates something that is an invitation to criminals and hackers. It is a honeypot for crime. And we have yet to convince ourselves, let alone the public or even the experts, that we have the technology that would withstand that.
	I will try to confine my speech to my worries about three things. A number of claims made in the Bill are unproven or just not true. In terms of the effects—in terms of tackling terrorism, crime or drug trafficking—I am very grateful to a retired scientist who took the trouble to undertake a European comparison of crime statistics on four parameters. He broke the EU 15 down into the eight that had voluntary ID cards, the four that had statutory compulsory ID cards and the three that had no ID cards. The figures are interesting. Over the past five years, the group that had the highest level of terrorist incidents and the highest rate of homicides were those that had compulsory cards. They also happened to have the greatest increases in drug trafficking and in crime. By contrast, those without cards had the lowest rate of terrorist incidents and the lowest rate of homicides, and had the most success against drug trafficking and in crime reduction.
	What does that prove? Nothing. It does not make a case for or against ID cards; it just says that they are not relevant or central to tackling those challenges. In the countries that have ID cards, they have them because they are popular with their citizens. But by and large, they have their own firewalls in them. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) said when she was moving her reasoned amendment, the key to this is that there is separation of data storage in those systems. We could have the same ID card system here, but it would require us to undertake a commitment that the responsibility and control was going to be placed in the hands of the citizen, not the hands of the state, and that is fundamentally at the heart of my objections to the Bill as currently drafted.
	I worry about the scope for what people refer to as function creep. The best example of this that I came across was in the United States, where I understand that the Bush Administration wants to introduce radio frequency ID chips to the passports of all foreign nationals. It is a great idea for the CIA; it will allow it to remotely monitor those who are there on lobbies and on demonstrations and who hold beliefs or convictions that the Administration disagrees with, and it is a reflection of the sort of paranoid society and Administration that one finds on the other side of the Atlantic. It is an American thing but not a UK thing.
	I thought I had better check that with the Home Office, however. I got a reply today from the Minister, who pointed out that in the UK
	"The International Civil Aviation Organisation initiated feasibility studies evaluating the acceptability and implementation options for biometrics and the storage of electronic data on passports including the use of radio frequency identification chips . . . The United Kingdom Passport Service . . . has played a significant role in the development of the options and subsequent standards. The UKPS has adopted these standards within the technical design of the biometric passport.
	No final decisions have been taken yet on the chip technology for ID cards."—[Official Report, 27 June 2005; Vol. 435, c. 1242W.]
	That is the power of stop-and-search without the hassle of the stop. If we do that, we fundamentally declare war on our own citizens. With the presumptions of criminality and the right to spy, we move from the open society to the surveillance society in an insignificant, unrecognised sweep because none of these proposals has to come back to the House for primary legislation. That is why we must oppose the Bill.

Diane Abbott: I am grateful to the House for allowing me to take part in this important debate. There are many reasons, both of principle and pragmatism, to vote against the Bill, but I intend to touch on only three: the politics of the Bill, its implication on issues of race and what is says for the future.
	First, let me remind my Labour colleagues that it is barely two months since we won an historic third term, and we are now embarked on squandering political capital on this doomed Bill. [Interruption.] Even the Almighty agrees with me. It is a doomed Bill because even if thunder and lightening cannot stop it, and even if the House cannot stop it dead in its tracks tonight, we know for sure that it is doomed to overrun its budget and to spiral in costs. The scheme will experience IT failure and the Bill will not achieve any of the claims that the Government make for it. We also know that the scheme will become especially unpopular at exactly the wrong point of the political cycle. There will come a time when not one Labour MP will want to be reminded that they voted for the Bill.
	I have consistently raised worries about race with Ministers and colleagues, so it is no coincidence that the Muslim Council of Britain, the Commission for Racial Equality and other organisations representing ethnic minorities have expressed their concerns about the Bill. A recent poll showed that 77 per cent. of ethnic minority people believed that they would be discriminated against under the Bill. There can be no doubt that the Bill will lead to the compulsory carrying of ID card—and that from there it must lead to the compulsory presentation of ID cards. We know from the French experience that if we move to such a system, the number of stops and searches on black, Asian and Muslim people will rise, which will be detrimental to community relations.
	One of the first issues on which I ever campaigned—without the help of the Almighty, when I was a younger and even more radical woman—was the sus laws. If Ministers understood the strength of feeling among people in ethnic minority communities about the prospect of being randomly stopped and asked to present their ID, they would think twice about the Bill. I know that the Bill will not provide for the compulsory carrying of ID cards, but that must come.
	As the evening has worn on, the Government Whips have subjected several of my colleagues to their usual rough-hew methods of persuasion. However, I say to colleagues in the closing minutes of the debate that voting against the Bill would be far from betraying our Government or going against Labour principles, because we would be doing the Government a great service. The more the public hear of the Bill, the less they like it, so the sooner it is stopped in its tracks, the better.

Tobias Ellwood: I am delighted to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, as we reach the conclusion of an important debate that hinges on the relationship between the citizen and the state and the borderline of the civil liberties that we feel able to concede so that we can live in a safe and secure world.
	Many believe that the concept of ID cards should be supported because if we have nothing to hide, we have nothing to fear. The hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) talked about the contents of his wallet and said that it contained several ID cards, such as library cards. However, each of the databases to which he referred is separate, isolated and low-cost and there would be limited damage if details were lost or stolen.
	The Bill has the commendable aim of tackling ID fraud, benefit fraud, illegal immigration and terrorism. However, the nation becomes more sceptical as we hear more about it. We do not know the definitive cost of the scheme, so we should ask ourselves whether we will get value for money. It has been said that the police support the Bill, but we should turn the question around: if the police were given £5 billion or £10 billion—whatever the cost of the scheme will be—what would they spend it on? In Bournemouth, the money certainly would not be spent on ID cards, but on CCTV and to pay for more people to work in benefits and Inland Revenue offices because those people could combat fraud.
	Hon. Members on both sides of the House have expressed concerns about the technology. The Government's trials—not the Cambridge study—show that iris scans have only a 96 per cent. success rate and that fingerprint scans have a 81 per cent. success rate. If I cut my finger or suffered a paper cut I could no longer be tracked on the system.

Roberta Blackman-Woods: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
	The Bill would give a national identity scheme commissioner oversight of the scheme and it would create the criminal offence of possessing false identity documents. We carried out a consultation on the Bill in my constituency. About 80 per cent. of respondents were in favour of it, but a sizeable proportion thought that the scheme would only have public support if certain safeguards were in place. I therefore urge my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to do all that he can to ensure that civil liberties issues are addressed. People have reasonable concerns about the protection of civil liberties, so Government reassurance is necessary.
	Primarily, these concerns relate to the amount of information held centrally, the security of the system, who will have access to it and for what purpose. Everything must be done to assure people that they will get an opportunity to check their own data and correct it, that private sector organisations will be able to access information only with consent, that use by public services conforms to the regulations prescribed in the Bill, that ID cards are cost-effective and that the scheme conforms to the European convention on human rights.
	Citizens Advice has set out its concerns that function creep and unauthorised disclosure should not happen; that IT systems can support the project, particularly before it is compulsory; that attention should be paid to hard-to-reach groups, described by Citizens Advice as itinerant counter-culture, those with chaotic lifestyles and those with mental health and mental capacity problems who will be affected by the legislation; that all will be treated equally; that the Act will not be used in a discriminatory way; and that there will be safeguards to ensure that it will be compatible with the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000. I am sure my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and his ministerial team will be able to address those concerns.
	In conclusion, ID cards could present a sensible and practical way forward and be an added tool in the fight against criminal activity. One almost has to sympathise with the Tories on the issue. They are for ID cards, then against. Their leader supports ID cards; another possible leader does not. However, the Liberals take the biscuit for uncertainty and indecisiveness. It may be worth reminding the House that the Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesman used to be in favour of ID cards, before changing his mind when it came to the crunch.
	The Lib Dems' case that fraud will increase if ID cards are introduced is not proven. It is much more likely that ID cards will help to tackle identity fraud. The Lib Dems propose to spend any money saved by not introducing ID cards on providing extra police. As the public are paying for the cards, the Government cannot spend money that they do not have. It is the Lib Dems, not the Government, who have a problem with the costing. It is necessary to have a reasoned debate on the matter so that concerns can be addressed and reassurance given to the public. That is a better way forward than the scaremongering from the Opposition parties.

Edward Garnier: We have had 33 contributors to the debate and they have broadly been divided into two camps—surprise, surprise. Twenty-four have spoken against the Bill. Eight managed to speak for the Bill. One of them was the Home Secretary, whose speech, I regret to say, was characterised more by bluster than by evidence. The support of other speakers was, to say the least, qualified—I think of the hon. Member for Knowsley, North and Sefton, East (Mr. Howarth), the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) and the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd).
	The hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr. Blackman-Woods) has just made a career-making speech and I wish her well. The hon. Member for Colne Valley (Kali Mountford) also made a deeply loyal speech in favour of the ID cards scheme proposed by the Bill. The hon. Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) produced one of his unfathomable speeches, which none the less was listened to with great care. The Home Secretary produced some sparkling remarks in the course of his speech, to which I shall return if I have a moment.
	Before analysing some of the points, I turn to the three maiden speakers—my hon. Friends the Members for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway), for Torridge and West Devon (Mr. Cox) and for Harwich (Mr. Carswell). Unfortunately, I was not able to listen to the speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich but reports tell me that it was a powerful speech, in which he paid proper respect to his immediate predecessor, Mr. Ivan Henderson, whom I knew well as a member of the Anglo-Netherlands parliamentary group, and to Iain Sproat and the Ridsdales—Sir Julian Ridsdale represented the seat before Iain Sproat. My hon. Friend said that ID cards will not reverse crime and also spoke passionately about the need for greater localisation, on which I support him.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon made a booming and powerful speech, in which he carefully described the beauties of his constituency. He was very kind, and properly so, to his immediate predecessor, John Burnett, and to his wife. He, too, said that this ID card scheme is not the answer to his constituents' prayers.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham also made a powerful speech. He spoke about his constituency with care and concern and said some very kind things, which both sides of the House shared and enjoyed, about his predecessor, Chris Pond. Like the other two maiden speakers, he made it clear that this ID scheme is not the answer to his constituents' concerns.
	Far too many speeches have been made for me to deal with them individually, but 24 hon. Members were deeply concerned about the Bill. This is the Government's broad case: ID cards will prevent terrorism; ID cards will prevent identity theft; ID cards will prevent and detect crime; ID cards have overwhelming public support; there is an international obligation to fingerprint or iris scan the population; the technology is available to fulfil the Bill's requirements; the implications for race relations have been exaggerated by Conservative Members and those Labour Members who disagree with the Government's case; and the costs are manageable, bearable and assessable.
	The Government's final argument is to rubbish the point about the common travel area, which was raised by the hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Robinson) and which they have not yet satisfactorily addressed. I have one gentle piece of advice for Democratic Unionist Members—be very careful about doing deals with a Government who singularly fail to deliver on their promises. I urge all hon. Members to consider the principles behind the Bill: are we sure that the Irish Republican Government will not have access to information in the north and in Great Britain?
	A number of my hon. Friends, including the shadow Home Secretary, have pointed out that the Bill was born in error, that it will die in error and that the sooner it dies, the better. The scheme is voluntary now, but it will become first compulsory, and then mandatory, in which case we will all be obliged to carry the card—we need to worry not about the card, but about the database that underlies it. The Government do not want us to realise that the Bill will not only expose every citizen's private life and private information to them and their machine, but require us to carry not only a plastic poll tax machine in our pockets, but a policeman in our pockets. We do not need policemen in our pockets—we need policemen on our streets. The Government refuse to accept that point and to commit resources to deal with terrorism, crime and the many other problems raised by hon. Members on both sides of the House.
	We heard from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg), my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley), the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) and the hon. Members for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick), for Winchester (Mr. Oaten), for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones), for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) and for Hampstead and Highgate (Glenda Jackson). They all made, in their own separate ways, broadly the same point—that the Bill will not deliver the panacea that is suggested, will not deal with identity theft, and will not prevent and detect crime. More to the point, it will exacerbate bad race relations and encourage an underclass to feel yet further alienated from the haves, while the Government try to glide over all this with a collection of truisms and platitudes.
	The hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews), the hon. Members for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) and for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson), my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), my hon. Friends the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood), for Stone (Mr. Cash), and for Ashford (Damian Green), and the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) ripped the Bill apart, as it deserves to be. The Bill is indefensible. Indeed, it has not been adequately defended by the Home Secretary who, in our submission, has no belief whatsoever in either the principle or the facts that are necessary to sustain the argument.
	I look forward to listening to bluster not only from the Home Secretary but from the Minister of State. We are used to them blustering—they are both happy little fellows—but neither has an argument on which to stand a case. I look forward to many Members joining the official Opposition, the Liberal Democrats and others in the Lobby in defeating the Bill.

Tony McNulty: I agree with the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) that there were 33 speeches; his sort of made 34. May I also say that we can now, with some degree of confidence, rule him out of the forthcoming leadership election?
	There were a range of speeches, which were in the main well tempered and good-humoured. I am grateful to the House for a debate in which Members expressed a range of views about details in the Bill and details that are yet to be subject to parliamentary discussion. I make no apology for repeating that this is enabling legislation. There is much still to be done in terms of detail, regulations and all the other elements.
	I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) on his consistency, at least, in being opposed to ID cards; I have no difficulty with his position.
	The hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) needs to be slightly more careful in what he says, because some of the points that he made raised obtuseness to a fine art. The notion that, even if we got to the stage where cards will be used for public service entitlements, a woman who chooses to have a termination will be in fear of that data being on the database is ludicrous in the extreme and unbecoming of the hon. Gentleman. His point about e-documents shows no understanding of what we are doing in terms of e-borders and the legislation that will be implemented in full by 2008.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North and Sefton, East (Mr. Howarth) said that the project is feasible. I agree, of course, that there are further issues to be addressed; that was a theme throughout.
	The right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) said that the provision is intrusive and that he disagrees with it. He made more or less the same speech that he has made for the past four years, to no avail.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) made a very impressive speech on costs and technology suggesting that the items that we have put forward do not stack up. I simply do not agree with her in that regard, but we can have more debate on that matter.
	The hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Robinson) made a measured and tempered speech. The Bill does not refer in any way to foreigners or foreign Governments, but the answer to his real concern is that the Bill does not permit information to be disclosed except in the specific circumstances clearly set out in the Bill. The relevant authorities include the police, security services and UK Government Departments. Other UK public authorities may be added by order, but only public authorities under the Human Rights Act 1998—that is, only UK authorities. The Bill allows information to be passed to law enforcement authorities overseas, but only in the case of serious crime. That is not a new power but a replication of powers that are already in the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001.
	There is no power in the Bill to provide information to other Governments, including the Government of the Republic of Ireland. The measure contains no power to add other Governments by Order.
	I congratulate the three maiden speakers. I am sad that time does not allow me to go into more detail about what they said, but all three spoke eloquently, and with a good deal of generosity about their predecessors, for which I am grateful.
	I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, South (Mr. Harris) was a victim of identity fraud but he showed clearly how the application registration card—ARC—for asylum seekers can be used well.
	I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Glenda Jackson) does not regard the Home Secretary as a snake oil salesman or a huckster. I am grateful for those comments. She is right that, in the past, there has been a great deal of overselling of the case for the card and all it can do. It can help and supplement but it cannot deal with terrorism in the way in which it was suggested the Government claimed—[Interruption.]

Tony McNulty: My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard), in his wisdom, made a telling contribution. I am sure that we shall discuss his comments in full subsequently.
	The hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) made a speech.
	My hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) made a fair speech, which was rooted in detail and dealt with some aspects of the benefits, to which we shall revert.
	The hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) mentioned Orwell and Lincoln—those were the highlights of his contribution.
	I fear that my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) managed to support the hon. Member for Winchester on identity cards.
	My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) was wrong in his supposition that there will be an open book for adding data to the database. Clauses 1, 3 and 43 and schedule 1 make that clearr. To suggest that DNA, health records, criminal records or other medical records can be included is plumb wrong.
	The hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Wallace) probably condemned himself to the Committee given his experience.
	One of the most irresponsible contributions was made by the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone). She spoke about DNA—she was wrong. She spoke about the impact on ethic minorities—she was wrong. The Bill is rooted in existing legislation on race relations, race discrimination and other matters.
	I say in all candour to my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) that, despite the agreement, if the prevailing wisdom of the usual channels is that there should be more time in Committee to scrutinise the Bill, let us have that discussion. The Government will be generous in their response. The deal was done, but if more time is required, let us talk about it. I have no problem with that.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) is right that an election took place only two months ago. We stood collectively on a manifesto that stated:
	"We will introduce ID cards, including biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports."
	That is at the heart of the Bill.
	I say again to my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen that we are already involved in some pre-procurement discussions. If that needs to be more open and if we can make it more open before we go through the EU process, I will try to ensure that that happens.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Kali Mountford) made a point about concessions. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said that we would reconsider the fee structure, concessions and other assorted elements.
	The Bill is an enabling measure. Its purpose is to protect the individual's identity, not suppress the individual. It does not propose a plastic poll tax and is not tantamount to an attack on civil liberties. There is much to be done and I commend the Bill to the House.

Ian Pearson: I congratulate the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) on securing an Adjournment debate on this subject and acknowledge his longstanding interest in Tibet. I assure him that the Government are deeply concerned about the human rights of the Tibetan people and follow developments on Tibet closely. We raise our concerns with the Chinese at every appropriate opportunity.
	Let me begin by discussing political prisoners in Tibet. We are particularly concerned about Tibetans who find themselves in prison for actions that are the peaceful expression of political, cultural and religious rights. The UK Government have lobbied over the years for the release of a number of political prisoners in Tibet. I had the pleasure of meeting one such former prisoner a few days ago. She explained to me the circumstances of her arrest and imprisonment, and I formed the view that she had clearly suffered greatly for exercising her legitimate right to express political opinions and to protest peacefully.
	The hon. Gentleman mentioned Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche. He may be aware that earlier this year my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary visited China and directly raised our concerns about the death sentence on that individual. Tenzin Deleg has been found guilty of several crimes, including plotting explosions. Clearly such activity would be wrong if the accusation were true, but there are real doubts about the fairness of his trial and sentence. The UK supported the EU statement about his case that was published in February this year.
	That brings me to a more general point about political prisoners. We have several reports that suggest that political prisoners are susceptible to mistreatment and torture when detained. We appreciate that torture can occur in any country in the world, but we are convinced that what distinguishes a well governed country from a poorly governed one is the reaction of the authorities to allegations of abuse. We very much welcome China's recent efforts to tackle torture, but our view, based on our own experience, is that greater transparency can radically improve the situation. Transparent systems have real benefits not only for prisoners who are vulnerable but for officials who might be unjustly accused. We hope that the Chinese and Tibetan authorities will bear in mind the UK's experience on this issue.
	I should add here that the Government have grave concerns about the fate of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the Dalai Lama's choice as the 11th Panchen Lama, who disappeared from public view in 1995. We have regularly requested that independent monitors be allowed to check on his welfare, and believe that the Chinese authorities are making a serious mistake in denying our requests. The secrecy surrounding this child's circumstances does not help China's image in the world.
	Moving on from individual cases, I should like to make a wider point about religion in Tibet. Chinese Government officials have told our ambassador to Beijing that the authorities strictly limit the numbers of monks and nuns in Tibet and that the political education campaign in monasteries and convents continues. Needless to say, it is very much our view that Tibetan monks and nuns should be allowed to pursue their religious way of life without hindrance or interference from Government or party officials.
	The hon. Gentleman mentioned the railways. The Government are also very concerned that the economic development of Tibet should benefit the native Tibetan population. While we recognise that the Chinese Government have invested a lot of money in infrastructure projects in Tibet, it is clear to anyone who has travelled there that the biggest beneficiaries of that investment are the large numbers of Han Chinese who have migrated to the region in recent years. They take most of the jobs associated with the infrastructure projects, and often compete with and exclude Tibetans from even lowly paid and less skilled jobs such as driving taxis and growing vegetables. That migration has also had a detrimental impact on traditional Tibetan culture.
	China's policy on developing Tibet would be more successful if it took more account of the wishes and needs of the local Tibetan population and sought to provide more benefits directly to them. We believe that the authorities should prioritise as much as possible the use of Tibetan labour and businesses, devote more resources to training and education for Tibetans, and improve access to Tibetan language education at all levels, including in key subjects such as maths and sciences.
	In our opinion, putting more emphasis on the benefits for the native population is more likely to produce a sustainable economy in Tibet and, in the longer term, that should impact positively on Tibet's poor rural communities. Of course greater transparency, consultation and dialogue with a broad range of Tibetans could and should play an important role in developing effective policies. I should also point out that such changes are in Beijing's interests, too. In the longer term, more Tibetans would experience the genuine benefits of Chinese investment in their region.
	I should add a word here about Tibet's environment, which will come under more pressure as transport links between China and Tibet develop. Tibet has a unique natural environment that should be carefully protected. We hope that the authorities will apply the highest standards of environmental protection to any large-scale industrial activities, especially mining, in the region.
	Let me speak briefly about the political situation in Tibet. The UK Government believe that a political agreement between the Chinese authorities and the Dalai Lama and his representatives is essential, not least as it should help to address some of the human rights issues that the hon. Gentleman and I have mentioned. With that end in mind, UK Ministers and officials have regularly encouraged the Chinese Government to engage in meaningful direct dialogue without pre-conditions with the Dalai Lama and his representatives.
	We appreciate that reaching a compromise is not easy and likely to require sacrifices and risks on both sides. However, the Dalai Lama has taken a big step in no longer calling for Tibetan independence. Instead, he seeks genuine autonomy for Tibet through his non-violent "middle way approach". We are encouraging the Chinese Government to respond constructively to the Dalai Lama's stance.
	In our view, setting pre-conditions for dialogue to take place is not a helpful step. Experience elsewhere suggests that setting such conditions can delay talks indefinitely, stop trust developing and mean that fruitful exchanges, which could contribute to a lasting solution, never happen.
	I want to stress that, in our view, it would be lamentable if the Chinese Government lost the opportunity to negotiate with the Dalai Lama, who has such authority over his people and is in a unique position to agree a lasting and legitimate solution to the benefit of Tibet and China. We sincerely hope that the Chinese Government have the courage to grasp the opportunity that His Holiness offers.
	The hon. Gentleman asked several questions. First, he asked me to confirm that the UK position on Tibet has not changed. I confirm that successive British Governments have regarded Tibet as autonomous while acknowledging the special position of the Chinese authorities there. That remains the case.
	The hon. Gentleman also asked about Tibetans in Nepal. The UK has lobbied the Nepalese Government about the closure of the Tibetan refugee welfare office. I understand that registration of the office is proceeding and we will continue to monitor the position.
	The hon. Gentleman asked whether we could do more to express our concerns about human rights. We raise our anxieties regularly through the UK China human rights dialogue. It conducts a regular, high level of exchange. We held the previous round in June in London. As the hon. Gentleman said, the next dialogue on human rights with China takes place in the autumn, when we lead the EU China human rights dialogue. I agree with him and the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) that that gives us an opportunity during our presidency to raise the issue again. We shall do that. Ministers regularly meet the Chinese authorities and our counterparts and discuss human rights issues, including at the highest level. As I said, when the Foreign Secretary was last in China, he raised human rights. I intend to be in China next week and I shall take the opportunity as part of my visit to raise human rights issues.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about the embargo. As he will know, in December 2003 the European Union agreed to launch a review of the EU's arms embargo on China. The UK Government, and indeed the EU as a whole, have not yet decided whether to lift the embargo imposed after the demonstrations in China in 1989. The review continues, and will take all relevant factors into account. The EU is obviously also interested in the views of the United States and other countries. It would be wrong to pre-empt the review's conclusion. In the meantime, we will continue to implement the embargo fully.
	Many people in the UK are also interested in the possibility of establishing an EU special representative for Tibet. I have considered whether we should be making approaches, but it is not clear to me that this is the right time to think about such an appointment, especially as I understand that the US special representative on Tibet, who was appointed some time ago, has not yet been able to visit the region. I suggest that in such circumstances the EU-China human rights dialogue remains a better mechanism for encouraging change, supported by the bilateral efforts of individual countries.